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The topic of this blog post is: things that have been away for a while. Exhibit A: me!
I had every intention of continuing the Snowflake Challenge/Year in Review set of posts I began in January, but my work - which was already semi-upended by the time I got the first of those posts out - became even more upended after that. I wanted to at least post Part 2 of my 'Looking back at fannish goals for 2024' two-parter – it feels weird to have Part 1 hanging out there without a counterpart – but I haven't been able to make it a priority, and I didn't want to add "Dreamwidth posting" to the list of things I was stressed about.
At the same time, I felt weird moving onto another topic and shutting that door altogether. Still, since it's now June (ack), I'm officially freeing myself from the burden of picking up that dropped thread in favour of posting about other things, because I miss it! So, hi - how is everyone doing?
Since I last checked in, I've found time to keep up a few things here and there like adding to my fanworks archive (not much, but I archived a few things for March Meta Matters and a couple more in May, while also making some tweaks to my meta organisation) and writing drabbles (I took part in the Small Fandoms Drabblethon again and then the spring round of Seasons of Drabbles). I've got into some new things, too, like the animated series Hazbin Hotel – but it's an 'old' thing I intend to talk about for the second half of this post.
Exhibit B: The Strange Case of Starship Iris, one of my all-time favourite podcasts, which has showed up in a few of my posts here (such as this pimp post I cross-posted, which is a good shout if you want context for what I'm talking about).
Starship Iris has been away for much longer than I have, as its second season aired in 2021, and the third and final season just started airing the day before yesterday (Friday) and will be serialising until October. So, it's been four years since new episodes were last airing regularly and since the fandom was last fully active. It's a strange feeling to be getting more of the podcast after so long – and since this is the last season, for it to be wrapping up!
I first discovered Starship Iris in early 2019 after resolving to listen to more audio dramas and working my way through some recs from fandom acquaintances. At that point, nine of the ten episodes of Season 1 were out, with the tenth releasing a couple of months after I started listening. This turned out to be a really good time to join the fandom, because there was a little bit of space for me to play around in imagining what might be to come for the season finale (my guesses were pretty off, but that didn't take away the fun of guessing xD) before experiencing the excitement of the finale releasing in real-time and then having even more time to speculate and headcanon possibilities for season 2.
I haven't been in a lot of fandoms as the canon has been releasing – my early fandoms were all anime that came out in the 90s and early 00s, or films like Spider-Man (the Toby Maguire ones) and The Road to El Dorado that were, of course, already out (although I did enjoy some speculative fic ahead of the release of Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 2), and I only joined Harry Potter fandom after the seventh book had been released. So, it was a really novel experience for me to be enthusing, speculating and creating fanworks about something as it was being put out there.
Add to this the fact that Starship Iris was a remarkable fandom experience for me in numerous ways: it was the first time I'd truly connected with a fandom community on Tumblr (I'd joined Tumblr while enamoured with Avengers fandom in late 2013, and while there was a huge community of fellow fans I longed to connect with, I never seemed to get much 'back', which soured me on the site for many years) – finally, it felt like I was talking to people who actually talked back. It was also the first time that, somehow, I found myself wanting to write fic after fic and actually finishing them, too, something that I'd honestly thought wasn't within my skillset for whatever reason. It was a small fandom, which took some adjusting to after my years of Marvel fandom, but that meant that it felt as though what I created mattered, and maybe that was what kept me going.
Like I said, it's a very special fandom to me. Even though I haven't written for it consistently these past four years since season 2 wrapped up, I've always enjoyed coming back to it, and have still created works I'm really proud of, like the fics I wrote for the Small Fandoms Drabblethon and the longer work I published for the Small Fandoms Surprise Scramble last year in May. This hasn't been dented by the fact that the fandom has been really, really quiet these past few years – understandably so, since even though the fandom grew significantly with the release of season 2, it's always been small, and current episodes were what brought it to life. But I really do miss that level of activity and chatter and having fic ideas sparked off by the new material.
(In fact, I just checked Tumblr and saw that there's a second mini-episode releasing tomorrow, much earlier than I expected, so yay! New episode!)
I'm in some ways apprehensive about where season 3 will be going – I didn't like the second half of season 2 as much as the first half, which is why I haven't been creating post-season-2 content since the second season wrapped in the same way I did after season 1. In many ways I'm not really here for the plot – I'm here for the community, but one tends to beget the other. Also, even if I don't love the new episodes, I'm hopeful that the enthusiasm of others who do will spur me on to create and to discuss them, or that I'll be motivated to bring out some older ideas I had and put them out there for the fandom. Either way, it'll be the last chance I have to do this, so I intend to make the most of it 💜
I had every intention of continuing the Snowflake Challenge/Year in Review set of posts I began in January, but my work - which was already semi-upended by the time I got the first of those posts out - became even more upended after that. I wanted to at least post Part 2 of my 'Looking back at fannish goals for 2024' two-parter – it feels weird to have Part 1 hanging out there without a counterpart – but I haven't been able to make it a priority, and I didn't want to add "Dreamwidth posting" to the list of things I was stressed about.
At the same time, I felt weird moving onto another topic and shutting that door altogether. Still, since it's now June (ack), I'm officially freeing myself from the burden of picking up that dropped thread in favour of posting about other things, because I miss it! So, hi - how is everyone doing?
Since I last checked in, I've found time to keep up a few things here and there like adding to my fanworks archive (not much, but I archived a few things for March Meta Matters and a couple more in May, while also making some tweaks to my meta organisation) and writing drabbles (I took part in the Small Fandoms Drabblethon again and then the spring round of Seasons of Drabbles). I've got into some new things, too, like the animated series Hazbin Hotel – but it's an 'old' thing I intend to talk about for the second half of this post.
Exhibit B: The Strange Case of Starship Iris, one of my all-time favourite podcasts, which has showed up in a few of my posts here (such as this pimp post I cross-posted, which is a good shout if you want context for what I'm talking about).
Starship Iris has been away for much longer than I have, as its second season aired in 2021, and the third and final season just started airing the day before yesterday (Friday) and will be serialising until October. So, it's been four years since new episodes were last airing regularly and since the fandom was last fully active. It's a strange feeling to be getting more of the podcast after so long – and since this is the last season, for it to be wrapping up!
I first discovered Starship Iris in early 2019 after resolving to listen to more audio dramas and working my way through some recs from fandom acquaintances. At that point, nine of the ten episodes of Season 1 were out, with the tenth releasing a couple of months after I started listening. This turned out to be a really good time to join the fandom, because there was a little bit of space for me to play around in imagining what might be to come for the season finale (my guesses were pretty off, but that didn't take away the fun of guessing xD) before experiencing the excitement of the finale releasing in real-time and then having even more time to speculate and headcanon possibilities for season 2.
I haven't been in a lot of fandoms as the canon has been releasing – my early fandoms were all anime that came out in the 90s and early 00s, or films like Spider-Man (the Toby Maguire ones) and The Road to El Dorado that were, of course, already out (although I did enjoy some speculative fic ahead of the release of Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean 2), and I only joined Harry Potter fandom after the seventh book had been released. So, it was a really novel experience for me to be enthusing, speculating and creating fanworks about something as it was being put out there.
Add to this the fact that Starship Iris was a remarkable fandom experience for me in numerous ways: it was the first time I'd truly connected with a fandom community on Tumblr (I'd joined Tumblr while enamoured with Avengers fandom in late 2013, and while there was a huge community of fellow fans I longed to connect with, I never seemed to get much 'back', which soured me on the site for many years) – finally, it felt like I was talking to people who actually talked back. It was also the first time that, somehow, I found myself wanting to write fic after fic and actually finishing them, too, something that I'd honestly thought wasn't within my skillset for whatever reason. It was a small fandom, which took some adjusting to after my years of Marvel fandom, but that meant that it felt as though what I created mattered, and maybe that was what kept me going.
Like I said, it's a very special fandom to me. Even though I haven't written for it consistently these past four years since season 2 wrapped up, I've always enjoyed coming back to it, and have still created works I'm really proud of, like the fics I wrote for the Small Fandoms Drabblethon and the longer work I published for the Small Fandoms Surprise Scramble last year in May. This hasn't been dented by the fact that the fandom has been really, really quiet these past few years – understandably so, since even though the fandom grew significantly with the release of season 2, it's always been small, and current episodes were what brought it to life. But I really do miss that level of activity and chatter and having fic ideas sparked off by the new material.
(In fact, I just checked Tumblr and saw that there's a second mini-episode releasing tomorrow, much earlier than I expected, so yay! New episode!)
I'm in some ways apprehensive about where season 3 will be going – I didn't like the second half of season 2 as much as the first half, which is why I haven't been creating post-season-2 content since the second season wrapped in the same way I did after season 1. In many ways I'm not really here for the plot – I'm here for the community, but one tends to beget the other. Also, even if I don't love the new episodes, I'm hopeful that the enthusiasm of others who do will spur me on to create and to discuss them, or that I'll be motivated to bring out some older ideas I had and put them out there for the fandom. Either way, it'll be the last chance I have to do this, so I intend to make the most of it 💜